
One of the first things I noticed about Fox when he arrived at my farm was the way he would “statue” when something in the distance caught his eye. He would grow about two hands, lock every muscle and joint in his body, and fix his stare on something far away. Sometimes it was obvious to me what he was looking at, and sometimes it was not. My last horse, Lila, often had a similar stance, though she also possessed the amazing ability to self regulate and come back to a relaxed state with a deep breath and a lick and chew. Fox did not possess this same skill set. The way he would deal with the tension of his faraway fixation was to move his feet. Standing still was not in his repertoire.
As I observed these things in Fox, I began to rifle through my training toolbox to see what I had in there that might help him learn some self regulation skills. The first thing I work on with most horses is backing out of my space and standing. But, as I mentioned, standing was not an ability that Fox possessed when he felt anxious. That is what his statue stance signaled…anxiousness and a triggering of his flight response. Hence, the need to move his feet when we came out of statue. He didn’t want to run away, but he did NOT feel ok standing still. Whenever I would ask him to back up and stand, I noticed and felt his desire to creep towards me when I backed him up, like he was always trying to get to me. The tricky part is that once he was near me, he wanted to be on top of me, and in his distracted state, this was sometimes not safe; which is why my instinct was to back him out of my space. This did not lead to any relaxation or understanding in Fox. In fact, it seemed to amp him up rather than settle him. So back to my training tool box…
Another process I have utilized for anxious horses is helping them lower their head with pressure and release. The idea is that when they relax enough to put their head down, the relaxation in their mind will follow. This is because lowering their head is usually a natural response in a horse that is feeling relaxed, so if we help them in that direction, relaxation often follows. So I began to play with this process with Fox. It was clear that he didn’t understand the head down with pressure on the poll cue, so that is where we began. I would add a little pressure on his rope, wait for any sort of softening, and then relax all pressure when he gave even a tiny bit. Fox caught on pretty quickly, and when he was already in a relaxed state, this seemed to help him relax more, evidenced by deep breaths, along with licking and chewing. Then I began to try utilizing this technique when I noticed his muscles tensing towards his statue stance. It backfired. Instead of becoming more relaxed when he yielded to the pressure, he seemed to become more anxious, the desire to move his feet even more obvious. He would obediently put his head lower, but wanted to pop it up as soon as the pressure was off, and he clearly wanted to move his feet the entire time. It was like he was being told to look away from the thing he was sure was coming to eat him, and that was far scarier than just looking at it. Putting his head down with that kind of pressure seemed to make him feel claustrophobic rather than relaxed. I was back to square one, but at least my horse didn’t want to live in denial of the existence of things that frightened him…that’s more than a lot of people are willing to do!
I then wondered if there was another way I could help him lower his head that would help him feel less pressured and claustrophobic, and still help him move his mind towards relaxation. I had done this with a horse under saddle by squeezing along their crest just in front of the withers until they started to lower their head. Before long, similar to the pressure on the halter at the poll, this horse understood that a light squeeze in front of the withers was a signal to lower their head in any gait, and it helped immensely with their overall relaxation. So Fox and I started working on this cue. He caught on quickly, and as is his nature, was obedient about his response to the aid. But pretty soon, I began to notice his feet wanting to move more rather than less, and the slow increase in his internal anxiety. It was like he was learning to show a relaxed posture, but internally, he was even less relaxed than before. At one point in this week-long experiment, he became internally anxious enough to buck me off after his hind foot dropped a rail on a jump as it clattered to the ground behind him. Externally he seemed so relaxed on the approach to the fence, but clearly he was not feeling that way on the inside, and the sound of the rail hitting the ground was enough to send him over the edge. It was so clear to me that Fox wants to work with people and has such a big heart. That buck was completely out of character, and I knew I was still barking up the wrong tree.
At this point, my ego was definitely questioning my ability to train horses. Here I was with the nicest horse I had ever owned, a genuine “good boy” with just a touch of anxiety, and I seemed unable to help him become more relaxed…which is kind of my thing, or so I thought. It was easy for me to get sucked into the story that maybe I wasn’t going to be able to help Fox, and that maybe he was too much horse for me. But somewhere deep down I knew that wasn’t true. That was just my ego doing what it does best…trying to keep me in a small, safe bubble where everything feels familiar. So I said “Thanks, ego. I appreciate you looking out for me. Let me sit with this a bit longer and see if I can find a solution.” I turned towards my instincts and listened for what they told me.
The feeling of Fox wanting to come towards me is what kept showing up. It was like whenever he was anxious, he wanted to come to me for support and to find safety. The “horse trainer” in my was saying “he needs to get out of your personal bubble”, but another part of me was saying “he is telling you what he needs.” So I let myself follow my instincts and made a plan. The next time I felt Fox becoming anxious, I stepped closer to him, to his left shoulder, and put my hand flat on his neck, just in front of where it joined his shoulder. I made sure I could feel my feet on the ground, that my body was relaxed, and then I took a deep breath. And I waited. I took another deep breath, and I just stood there with him, allowing him to feel however he was feeling about whatever he was sensing or seeing. And then he took a deep breath, looked at me, and lowered his head a bit, licking and chewing. My heart swelled, for him and for myself.
It’s called co-regulation. I am well familiar with it in people and horses, though the way I have used it has often looked quite different than that moment with Fox. I’ve used it more when a horse is moving in a circle around me, to help them slow down by slowing and relaxing my own body. I had played with that with Fox many times, and it had been effective. This was just another version of the same thing. A smaller bite of it. A breaking down of a larger idea into a more manageable, digestible size that Fox could understand. What I now understood was happening was that when Fox would get fixated on something in the distance, his mind would essentially leave his body. He would travel to wherever that object of his fixation was, and was no longer mentally present in the physical location he and I were together. He had no pathway back to that place either, as every part of him was gone. So I had to become his way back. By being present and grounded myself, and then making physical contact with him, I became that tether for Fox back to the present moment. When he realized he was actually there, with me, and not off with the scary thing he was visiting in the distance, he could breath and relax. And in practicing that over and over again, Fox began to realize he could regulate himself, even when I wasn’t touching him. It was so simple and so effective!
Not 24 hours after I trusted myself enough to try helping Fox this way, I stumbled upon a Tristan Tucker (TRT Method) video on Facebook, in which he talked about this exact same concept and technique. It was so validating! It’s so easy to fall into the trap of using a “method” and thinking it is the way things will work for all horses. In this particular case for me, I thought I was being creative by using three different methods, as they all fit into the same “the horse should” box I had constructed around the behavior. It turns out that what Fox and I both needed was to put the toolbox down and simply tune in to each other. The answer was right there, all along, from the beginning. And as frustrating as situations like this can be in some moments, I will never stop appreciating the way that horses hold up a mirror and show me exactly what I need to see, even if it takes me a minute to see it.
Holy crap! Are you sure you didn't write this blog and forgot to address to me & my horse!? This whole blog is where I have been struggling. That ego bringing me down has been such a bear on my back. Thanks for sharing!